Moving from a Wi-Fi house to a hubitat model

I have a smart home full of items from different brands on WiFi. Is it possible to switch with all the items to the hubitat connection? If so, what's the benefit since I'll still be on WiFi? Or I don't understand something...

It depends ... When you say:

Are you referring to the Hubitat driver / app for the device? if so, my only concern would be the very general nature of your question. What kind of devices are you using? Do they each have a HE driver?

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Hi, thanks for the response. In my smart home of switches and sensors, most of them are linked to tuya, ewelink and more apps, most of them on WiFi. I was exposed to hubitat c8 which recommends switching to a local network. My question is how do I move with all the items at home and also what is the benefit of still having the communication on WiFi. Thanks

Ok, your options for moving you devices to using local communications between the device and HE I may need to leave for others to comment, and I would suggest listing some of the devices you are using, in case that may be relevant in those discussions.

More generally, the HE philosophy, and I am taking some liberties here in calling it that, as it's largely my own interpretation.... is that having local control of your home, with not reliance on cloud-hosted services is both a more reliable and performant solution than using cloud-hosted platforms. The simple example to illustrate this would be needing to rely on a cloud-hosted service to turn on the lights in a room, why should you need a server located in (potentially) a foreign country to turn on a light globe < 6ft away? Equally, for things like lighting where speed is important to the user-experience, cloud-hosted solutions are rarely going to compete with local ones in terms of speed.

All of that said, I come back to my original comments, it depends on the specific devices when it comes to your options for integration with HE, even within the general platform of Tuya, at least from my very broad understanding of that platform, without any devices I have chosen to integrate with HE....

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The advantage of a local network is clear, although it is not clear how the items will be operated outside the home. The design is suitable for a new home that has not yet been implemented as a smart home. The question is what is possible and should be done in an existing smart home, most of which is based on the cloud and the server via Wi-Fi. For example: if I have light switches that work on WiFi in the tuya / smart life app, if I want to transfer them to the hubitat c8, what is the process and what is the added value of this.

The benefits of moving your cloud-based devices to being controlled locally will be speed, reliability and reduced dependencies on external systems that may be subject to the companies that run them being viable and operational.

Hubitat does offer a dashboard solution whereby you can manually control devices you make available on a dashboard via their cloud-hosted platform. Alongside this, their subscription services also offer more administrative-level controls of your HE platform from outside your LAN / Wi-Fi network. To my earlier point, you are not tied to relying on the the HE cloud offering being available, you can still continue to control devices on your dashboards locally or by using a personal VPN to connect to your HE instance, thereby removing your dependence on HE continuing to operate and provide their cloud services.

I feel like I should be referencing a very old topic or documentation page that outlines all of this... hopefully others can locate those for me.... :slight_smile:

Best place to start may be to post a list of devices so that we can help you determine which ones may already have an HE Integration or driver.

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IF the devices have HE drivers and IF they can be controlled independently of the cloud, there are three advantages I can think of.

(1) you become independent of the cloud
(2) you gain the powerful automation and integration flexibility of HE
(3) there's an amazing support community

Others have already answered this but you don't lose anything in terms of remote control if that's something you need. Most of us look at HE as an automation platform more than a remote control platform, though it is perfectly capable of both. In other words the goal most of us have is not to actually have to control anything but to let HE take care of it for you. For instance, remote control would allow you to arm your alarm system, dim you lights, and look your doors when you've left the house. Automation detects that you've left the house, checks to make sure your partner is gone too, arms the alarm system for you, dims the lights automatically, locks the doors, and then feeds the cats while playing soothing cat music on the IoT device of your choosing.

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But how can you be sure the cats are alive.... :grinning:

Sorry.... not helping....

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They are both alive and dead until @brianwilson's camect integration detects a cat and reports to HE that the cats are alive.

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SchrĂśdinger's cats????

EDIT: Thank you to The BIg Bang Theory TV show for the education on what SchrĂśdinger's cat is.

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If you want to be explicit.... :slight_smile: Easy for me to extend the humorous tangent I started, but we should probably get back to @user4785 's original questions about cloud-hosted devices....

@thebearmay 's most recent questions about the kinds of devices is the most revelant questions at the moment I expect.

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@user4785 Ok here is the thing. SOME wifi devices are directly supported by Hubitat because they have a local API. Shelley, Nanoleaf, Lifx to name a few. Other wifi devices that are cloud based (Like Tuya) have community supported integrations but they will remain cloud based because that is what their API exposes. But of course not all wifi devices have an API that their manufacturer allows.

The best way to keep things local is to use z-wave/zigbee/clear connect devices (the last requires the Lutron Pro 2 hub but is fantastic).

Now for controlling anything from your phone, it will be local when you are on the same network. It will switch to using Hubitat's cloud servers for control. (Or you can use a VPN to bypass them)

And lastly for myself, I prefer automation over remote control myself. I have one dashboard just to monitor a couple of things.

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Feel bad for leaving Dan out of the list of people to refer to.... He seems to have come up with a popular set of steps for migrating a HE hub...

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He's old, he doesn't have any feelings left :rofl:

@danabw

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What forces from the dark-side have you exposed him to.... Does this mean I should uninstall my Harmony integration.... Will it start directing me to more and more commercial television... :slight_smile: (Moving even more away from @user4785 's question's now... )

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Just for clarity ‘local’ can mean via a hub. For example Philips Hue lights can operate in all three roles I believe.

You often use a Philips Hue Hub that sits in your home and the bulbs attach directly to this. So does the HE integration and so the control is implemented over your local WiFi or wired Ethernet via the local hub and a separated Philips only ZigBee network to attach to the bulbs

OR you can pair each bulb individually directly to the HE hub

OR the Philips hub actually connects to Philips and their cloud. This allows an app to be installed on your phone (or even HE) that talks to the hub allowing remote control of your Hue setup

And/or you can expose any HE device inc. Hue remotely via the HE Dashboard

OR you can integrate via Apple’s HomeKit using HE and both internally and externally. HomeKit was essentially a cloud based system but recent updates are offering local operation too.

Lots of approaches and different for each device but you can unify the presentation to say one dashboard. There are devices that require cloud and those that are always local and some that offer both.

There’s homework to do here for each of the devices you have, as mentioned above. In some cases even the local transport is selectable e.g. whether to use WiFi or a radio network like ZigBee, ZWave or newer things like Matter.

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Well yes but my interpretation of local means just that, local with no internet access needed.

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People have differing views of Ethernet/WiFi transport and radio protocols like ZigBee, ZWave and soon to be Matter.

The most usual one for Ethernet/WiFi is speed, reliability, bandwidth and long distance bridging but these devices are rarely battery powered.

The Z networks typically support battery operation and quick retrofit but can be less predictable.

I use wired for my lighting and security and IP where possible elsewhere or bridging is required, dropping to Z radio devices where retrofit is difficult or battery operation required.

That suits me really well and works brilliantly. For those with stable Z networks they will have very different views. Horses for courses.

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That’s mine too.. we’re saying the same thing, just because it uses a hub doesn’t mean it’s cloud based. Cloud required for control/status is to be avoided wherever possible.

One of the other aspects to consider though is firmware updates if you don’t have manufacturer cloud access.

The OP’s path is going to be primarily mandated by HE local support / drivers..

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